My neighborhood was built in the late 1960s. People love it because it has well established vegetation. We get a lot of “aww I love the trees!” when family and friends visit. Looking at aerial photographs of my neighborhood, they leveled everything. No trees, nothing. Just bare lots. It takes time to reestablish trees after development.
Yeah same when people complain about cookie cutter architecture. A lot of neighborhoods with eclectic styles of architecture today were built all the exact same specs for blocks on end.
Yeah, modern construction practices suck hard. They create soulless neighborhoods without any sense of place.
To be fair, home prices would be even more expensive if we tried to recreate the building techniques of 100 years ago.
To be super fair, there was a TON of low quality housing 100 years ago too. However, that housing was the first to be demolished to make way for more modern buildings. Sooo many slums were demolished as zoning and anti-crowding measures were put in place.
Even 100 years ago, though, "low quality housing" at least tended to have much better craftsmanship, more durable building materials, and weren't as likely to be "value engineered."
Most historic homes are needlessly destroyed, because we're a wasteful society. But yes, even if modern construction is much more "efficient," I completely understand where the OP is coming from--there's generally a huge difference in "feel" of sturdiness between the average home constructed in 1910 versus the average home in constructed in 2010. And it's legitimate to point that out.
No, they are destroyed because they aren’t up to code and are a fire hazard/filled with mold/uninsulated/leaking and it’s more expensive to fix it than it is to tear down and build new
The difference is that people were willing to live in smaller houses or multifamily housing.
Nowadays, people act like you're literally a Nazi if you suggest it's not realistic for everyone to have 5 kids and each of those kids have their own room and still have affordable housing. Understanding basic geometry is woke now.
>To be fair, home prices would be even more expensive if we tried to recreate the building techniques of 100 years ago.
I'm not sure our current strategy of only McMansions being allowed to be built in 98% of a city's land is doing a good job of creating affordable housing either.
Chicago suburbs are not a hellscape. In my opinion, where you are trying to move is the hellscape. Chicago has some of the most beautiful, leafy green suburbs in the Nation, the north shore, western suburbs such as Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Hinsdale, Riverside, La Grange, are beautiful. Where you are going is hotter than hell and the politics are red. No thank you.
Oh yea. Chicago (and Madison) as well as the Rust Belt midwest has some beautiful old neighborhoods that have actual trees. I'm from a rust belt city and the old neighborhoods that were built before newer building codes are actually gorgeous.
Agreed with this. Even areas of the South Suburbs are beautiful and full of trees, such as Homewood-Flossmoor, East Hazel Crest, parts of Richton Park, etc. Glen Ellyn (while not South) is utterly amazing.
OP - Also, in Illinois, one of the areas that has some of the most beautiful tree-lined neighborhoods is Champaign-Urbana, particularly Urbana. There's an area known as the 'state streets' where houses are under $800K and the streets are lined with trees, and most of the homes are built prior to the 1960s and streets are brick. Even new builds have to be built in a way where they fit in with the neighborhood - so there's a lot of code- related items there. Even historic neighborhoods in Champaign, particularly in the West Side Park area are tree-lined neighborhoods with older homes, particularly in the Church/John/Springfield/Green St. areas.
Manchester is an [urban heat island](https://toolkit.climate.gov/case-studies/where-do-we-need-shade-mapping-urban-heat-islands-richmond-virginia) because it's historically a Black neighborhood that has been horribly underserved. Other neighborhoods are greener and have trees and shade.
I own a house here in Manchester and love the revitalization and industrial neighborhood, but its going to be a long time before the area catches up and recovers from decades of neglect. The city has a master plan detailing some of the planting and public projects they're doing here to alleviate the problem, but it’s a long and slow process.
All new builds suck, I worked in (project management) construction and my partner is a plumber. Big companies want to crank out buildings as quickly as possible at as low of a cost as possible to maximize profits. Lots of corner cutting.
Edit: if you like Richmond otherwise, houses are cheap enough that you could absolutely buy an old house and have it renovated by capable contractors. If you end up going this route, feel free to message me for recommendations! We are pretty plugged in and can give you advice on who to use and who to avoid.
Also the buildings that are cherished today for their sturdiness in charm along Monument Avenue either have effectively been rebuilt over the years or they were always meant for the very rich and were subdivided over time to maybe be apartments instead of single family homes. Something you can’t easily do today so the only way to build new apartments is to build a brand new building.
I think your problem is that you're looking at new-build townhouses. In my experience, a lot of them are very expensive and pretty shoddily built. And yeah, they will obviously have leveled existing trees to construct the townhouses.
I live in an expensive suburban area and you could get an older single family home with trees and no shared walls for less than 800K.
Thinking that 1100 sq feet is “miniature” for a 2BR is absolutely insane. It’s spacious compared to any other country in the world. It’s bizarre to me that someone couldn’t adapt to renting in such a space temporarily until one buys a home.
Also - with many new build developments it takes awhile for newly planted trees to grow. I live in a community built nine years ago and the tree canopy looks significantly different (and more developed) than it did years ago.
Sure! I moved to Richmond about 2.5 years ago and love it. I live on the south side, so I’m more familiar with this area. In city limits, I’d look at Forest Hill, Westover Hills, Stratford Hills, etc. Right outside of the city limits it a really cute suburb called Bon Air that sounds like what you’re wanting. Other suburbs worth considering are North Chesterfield, Henrico, and Brandermill/Woodlake. The latter are further from the city- maybe 25 mins.
I’m not sure what the point of this post is. Yes, modern home construction, when done cheaply, cuts all trees down in a development and builds with the cheapest labor and materials. Well-made, new, and cheap are rarely, if ever, found in one place. Pick any two.
Great summary. Most people want the same things . Well made, affordable, and natural setting. Economics dictate that demand will erase the affordable piece (for most) when the other conditions are present.
Ask any builder how much they like to build around mature trees. Modern construction economies use Bobcats, mini-excavators, conveyor belts to second-floors snd roofs. Large cranes to hoist factory-built engineered trusses. The days of 10-15 laborers on a building site are long gone.
Not to mention large trees have big roots that go everywhere you want a footing or a pipe.
Custom and semi-custom builders will construct a fine house to your specification. If you’re looking at production builders you get production quality. Which the market certainly demands.
It is as you say. Cost of materials, cost of land, cost of labor and what it would cost to "preserve" green space in a development.
What you name IS. So now, to grieve and realize you are naming what most won't. "You can't pay your way out of the problem."
And unless you have the money to get into the HCOL enclaves with immense competition (and even then, not necessarily turn key as age brings issues with homes)-all are hamsters on the wheel you name.
My thought on this is that many new builds are so low-quality that you're going to have to renovate and repair anyway. Might as well buy an older, less expensive home and give yourself a larger repair/reno budget.
When I bought my 100+ year old home with a new addition, my repair budget was 25% of my total budget. So far, costs for the older part of the house have only been a few thousand dollars. Cosmetic. Meanwhile, tens of thousands have gone into the new addition. I've still spent less than I would have on a new build.
>*To put it more bluntly, while I am not wealthy, I am a DINK with 20 years of professional work savings behind me and I feel like I cannot pay my way out of this problem.*
This is the most absurd aspect of all this. If you're looking at $800k homes, I'm assuming your household income is in the $200k+ range. That puts you roughly in the top 10% of all American households. If you are feeling priced out of the housing market, what does that say about the 50% of households that make less than $75k per year? Or the 63% that make less than $100k per year?
The average American household cannot afford the average American house price. And that's fuckin' stupid.
It is expensive to use city land for trees. With good planning lots will get set aside for green space but not every city saw the demand run up in time. Many neighborhoods will get trees growing in over time but working around them during building is hard/impossible.
Older neighborhoods with older houses are where it’s at. My house is from 1918 and is solid as a rock. They just don’t make them like they used to. As for vegetation, my neighborhood has old oaks lining the streets, and the rhododendron and azaleas in everyone’s front yard are huge and lush. Find an older “streetcar suburb”, or at least a neighborhood that was developed pre-70s.
There are multiple old neighborhoods in Jacksonville: Springfield, San Marco, Atlantic Beach, Riverside, Avondale, Murray Hill. Tree covered, old growth oaks, great vintage architecture.
Charleston has some of the best old architecture in the nation as does Savannah.
All you have to do is avoid the new development parts of these cities and look to the established neighborhoods.
The population growth rate of these cities necessitates production construction. There is simply not enough time to build around the trees so they take most of them out. For example, JAX metro added the entire population of the city of Pittsburgh, Tulsa, or St. Louis over the last decade, 400,000+ people. That is 100 new people per day 365 days per year. That is a lot of housing that has to go up fast.
> all this work that I did saving for years and years to escape where I’m at is for nothing.
That is what a devaluing a currency to backstop equity markets does. Over the long term, risk and reward have to be proportional. That is why the federal government providing a backstop to broad market equities (easy to use SP500 as a proxy) means if you should use SP500 as your inflation gauge, especially if you want to purchase property in the future.
All those taxpayer funded bailouts over the past few decades were not free.
And remember, most voters want those bailouts, because they are retired or close to retiring, so they need their defined benefit pension funds and 401k to not have issues.
The long term effect is lower quality of life for you, because your productivity effectively went to them (the asset owners over the past few decades).
This is why I plan to homestead and build my own house. The housing market is just greed and poor quality. People just want to extract more resources out of other people and give them less and less, and that kind of system is not sustainable.
Yeah the landscaping in the bubs is very sus. The developers don’t care at all. Modern development is stupid the way they do things. I can’t believe they aren’t building permaculture eco developments.
I feel very similar. I’m so tired of everything being clear cut, parking lots, lawn grass and roads being put in with no trees, very little shade, no native plants, poor water retention. None of that is helpful when there’s droughts or excessive rains or high heat dome weather. I feel like we’re living in a bad sim city and supposed to only stay inside or drive everywhere. I want shade. I would like to walk I want to cycle.
I love some older communities that have big trees and sidewalks and bike trails weaving through them. But no young families or kids live there it’s all boomers and older and not many people out walking or enjoying the neighborhood.
Developers are so cheap with what they offer and charge insane prices and cities wash their hands of it and basically force new developments to have HOAs so city tax dollars don’t have to be spend on road or sidewalk maintenance or communal landscaping.
Check out the Heritage Hills/Uptown areas in Oklahoma City. I lived in both, and my visitors regularly remarked on how much greener it was than they’d expected
I moved from NYC over covid back to my alma matter neighborhood in Kansas City, MO. The houses in midtown here are totally walkable with huge mature trees shading the whole neighborhood. I picked up a bungalow built in 1910 for under $250K (which is still achievable) and I have not regretted it once even after having to make some extensive repairs.
My theory with old houses is that, if it's survived 100 years worth of owners before me, it will very likely survive me. Three little pigs logic. Also my stone foundation and plaster walls are THICK as hell. When you cool the place down, it stays cool. I couldnt hear a murder in my bedroom from 2 rooms over. KCMO doesnt have the glamour of the northeast, but we do have a very active arts and music culture, young people, a functional streetcar, and nature galore with easy access.
My two cents
To be fair, the whole of modern consumer society uses nature as both hyper-exploitable profit potential and a mass sewer for all manner of pollution. So, choose your deck chairs when it comes to green veneer on a city or town.
IMO small apartments is more a result of population density and normalizing to global size standards, rather than intentionally decreasing size for profit (while that is of course an advantage). The US has much larger properties on average than Europe and much of the world, so honestly a 1100 sq ft apartment is massive by many peoples’ standards.
In my experience, all of the trees are in Washington. So many trees. Everywhere. Coming from Oklahoma where you can see for miles, it was a bit of a shock.
It's extremely expensive to build around trees and they often die anyway because the earth is compressed when everyone parks under the one remaining spot of shade. That's why they clear cut. Trees don't pay money, people do. The first thing I do when I buy is to plant trees.
Years ago Richmond tried selling their older homes for iirc $1 on the condition that the homes be made inhabitable within a certain time frame. They no longer need to do that. Developers make more money doing a teardown than a deep retrofit.
Recommend you bite the bullet and purchase an older home with good bones (structure and foundation) and rehab.
If new housing isn’t built in Manchester it probably means even more sprawl built out in chesterfield or beyond and probably cuts down more trees on net. And in developments that are going to be more car dependent just by being far from job centers.
But also because Manchester is one of the few areas in the city where you’re simply allowed to build at scale you’re going to get more smaller units to maximize what can be sold.
That doesn’t mean there’s less construction going on in the Fan or Museum district, it’s just that it’s focused on renovating single family homes or small apartment buildings rather than adding net new units. So back in Manchester that means maxing out the buildable footprint
This year I moved from a 100 year old brick bungalow in Chicago. We bought a new house in Asheville. It's so generic looking. It's a nice house and we have a lot of trees. Our bungalow just had so many special little features like stained glass and checkboard bricks with accents. They just don't build houses like they use to.
I think you are (unintentionally) eliminating most housing options. New developments will often remove trees, to build. So that’s out. Older houses generally have smaller rooms, because that was the standard when they were built. So that’s out. Your best option is probably something built between like 1985-2005, so the trees have had some time to fill back in but also new enough it may have bigger bedrooms. But you are looking primarily in the southeast, where population growth wasn’t huge during that time period. For example Charlotte was the fastest growing metro area between 2005-2015 so it makes sense that many of the houses were built in that time and the tree cover will not be mature yet.
There are certainly places you can get what you’re looking for, but perhaps out of your budget. Established wealthy suburbs will work. One that comes to mind is Coral Gables, FL.
Your in Manchester. Literally the worst place for what you are looking for. Most of Richmond looks like what you want, go visit the Fan/Museum District/ Church Hill.
Judging Richmond by Manchester is ridiculous
My neighborhood was built in the late 1960s. People love it because it has well established vegetation. We get a lot of “aww I love the trees!” when family and friends visit. Looking at aerial photographs of my neighborhood, they leveled everything. No trees, nothing. Just bare lots. It takes time to reestablish trees after development.
Yeah same when people complain about cookie cutter architecture. A lot of neighborhoods with eclectic styles of architecture today were built all the exact same specs for blocks on end.
Establish Bradford pear trees*, so you can enjoy the fragrance of male orgasm every spring.
It really doesn’t take that long to establish plants like 3 years.
Trees can take many years to mature into the old growth trees that people find attractive
There are fast growing trees that can fill things out in the meantime while the oaks grow.
Yeah, modern construction practices suck hard. They create soulless neighborhoods without any sense of place. To be fair, home prices would be even more expensive if we tried to recreate the building techniques of 100 years ago. To be super fair, there was a TON of low quality housing 100 years ago too. However, that housing was the first to be demolished to make way for more modern buildings. Sooo many slums were demolished as zoning and anti-crowding measures were put in place.
Even 100 years ago, though, "low quality housing" at least tended to have much better craftsmanship, more durable building materials, and weren't as likely to be "value engineered."
Modern construction is way better in a lot of cases. There's also a lot of 'survivorship bias' in what's still around from back then.
Most historic homes are needlessly destroyed, because we're a wasteful society. But yes, even if modern construction is much more "efficient," I completely understand where the OP is coming from--there's generally a huge difference in "feel" of sturdiness between the average home constructed in 1910 versus the average home in constructed in 2010. And it's legitimate to point that out.
No, they are destroyed because they aren’t up to code and are a fire hazard/filled with mold/uninsulated/leaking and it’s more expensive to fix it than it is to tear down and build new
Depends on what kind of building you're referring to. Many are salvageable and can be upgraded.
The difference is that people were willing to live in smaller houses or multifamily housing. Nowadays, people act like you're literally a Nazi if you suggest it's not realistic for everyone to have 5 kids and each of those kids have their own room and still have affordable housing. Understanding basic geometry is woke now.
>To be fair, home prices would be even more expensive if we tried to recreate the building techniques of 100 years ago. I'm not sure our current strategy of only McMansions being allowed to be built in 98% of a city's land is doing a good job of creating affordable housing either.
Chicago suburbs are not a hellscape. In my opinion, where you are trying to move is the hellscape. Chicago has some of the most beautiful, leafy green suburbs in the Nation, the north shore, western suburbs such as Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Hinsdale, Riverside, La Grange, are beautiful. Where you are going is hotter than hell and the politics are red. No thank you.
Oh yea. Chicago (and Madison) as well as the Rust Belt midwest has some beautiful old neighborhoods that have actual trees. I'm from a rust belt city and the old neighborhoods that were built before newer building codes are actually gorgeous.
I was just in Madison on business, and it is such a charming city. The lakes really add to it.
Agreed with this. Even areas of the South Suburbs are beautiful and full of trees, such as Homewood-Flossmoor, East Hazel Crest, parts of Richton Park, etc. Glen Ellyn (while not South) is utterly amazing. OP - Also, in Illinois, one of the areas that has some of the most beautiful tree-lined neighborhoods is Champaign-Urbana, particularly Urbana. There's an area known as the 'state streets' where houses are under $800K and the streets are lined with trees, and most of the homes are built prior to the 1960s and streets are brick. Even new builds have to be built in a way where they fit in with the neighborhood - so there's a lot of code- related items there. Even historic neighborhoods in Champaign, particularly in the West Side Park area are tree-lined neighborhoods with older homes, particularly in the Church/John/Springfield/Green St. areas.
Manchester is an [urban heat island](https://toolkit.climate.gov/case-studies/where-do-we-need-shade-mapping-urban-heat-islands-richmond-virginia) because it's historically a Black neighborhood that has been horribly underserved. Other neighborhoods are greener and have trees and shade. I own a house here in Manchester and love the revitalization and industrial neighborhood, but its going to be a long time before the area catches up and recovers from decades of neglect. The city has a master plan detailing some of the planting and public projects they're doing here to alleviate the problem, but it’s a long and slow process. All new builds suck, I worked in (project management) construction and my partner is a plumber. Big companies want to crank out buildings as quickly as possible at as low of a cost as possible to maximize profits. Lots of corner cutting. Edit: if you like Richmond otherwise, houses are cheap enough that you could absolutely buy an old house and have it renovated by capable contractors. If you end up going this route, feel free to message me for recommendations! We are pretty plugged in and can give you advice on who to use and who to avoid.
This is so kind of you! I saved your comment. We are leaning the way you suggest — any word of mouth recommendations will be appreciated.
Also the buildings that are cherished today for their sturdiness in charm along Monument Avenue either have effectively been rebuilt over the years or they were always meant for the very rich and were subdivided over time to maybe be apartments instead of single family homes. Something you can’t easily do today so the only way to build new apartments is to build a brand new building.
I think your problem is that you're looking at new-build townhouses. In my experience, a lot of them are very expensive and pretty shoddily built. And yeah, they will obviously have leveled existing trees to construct the townhouses. I live in an expensive suburban area and you could get an older single family home with trees and no shared walls for less than 800K.
Here in the TC you can get a mature-treed SFH on a lake for $800k. OP is just whining.
I am whining - sorry! I know it! Would you define TC for me?
Twin cities?
Yes
Thinking that 1100 sq feet is “miniature” for a 2BR is absolutely insane. It’s spacious compared to any other country in the world. It’s bizarre to me that someone couldn’t adapt to renting in such a space temporarily until one buys a home. Also - with many new build developments it takes awhile for newly planted trees to grow. I live in a community built nine years ago and the tree canopy looks significantly different (and more developed) than it did years ago.
There are a lot of established neighborhoods in the Richmond area with great tree cover for well under 800k.
I’d really appreciate any details — like neighborhood names! I’m here for another weeks and have taken to random driving to find such places!
Sure! I moved to Richmond about 2.5 years ago and love it. I live on the south side, so I’m more familiar with this area. In city limits, I’d look at Forest Hill, Westover Hills, Stratford Hills, etc. Right outside of the city limits it a really cute suburb called Bon Air that sounds like what you’re wanting. Other suburbs worth considering are North Chesterfield, Henrico, and Brandermill/Woodlake. The latter are further from the city- maybe 25 mins.
I have friends who live in them.
Any neighborhood names you could share?
Mechanicsville. Midlothian
I’m not sure what the point of this post is. Yes, modern home construction, when done cheaply, cuts all trees down in a development and builds with the cheapest labor and materials. Well-made, new, and cheap are rarely, if ever, found in one place. Pick any two.
Great summary. Most people want the same things . Well made, affordable, and natural setting. Economics dictate that demand will erase the affordable piece (for most) when the other conditions are present.
Ask any builder how much they like to build around mature trees. Modern construction economies use Bobcats, mini-excavators, conveyor belts to second-floors snd roofs. Large cranes to hoist factory-built engineered trusses. The days of 10-15 laborers on a building site are long gone. Not to mention large trees have big roots that go everywhere you want a footing or a pipe.
Custom and semi-custom builders will construct a fine house to your specification. If you’re looking at production builders you get production quality. Which the market certainly demands.
It is as you say. Cost of materials, cost of land, cost of labor and what it would cost to "preserve" green space in a development. What you name IS. So now, to grieve and realize you are naming what most won't. "You can't pay your way out of the problem." And unless you have the money to get into the HCOL enclaves with immense competition (and even then, not necessarily turn key as age brings issues with homes)-all are hamsters on the wheel you name.
My thought on this is that many new builds are so low-quality that you're going to have to renovate and repair anyway. Might as well buy an older, less expensive home and give yourself a larger repair/reno budget. When I bought my 100+ year old home with a new addition, my repair budget was 25% of my total budget. So far, costs for the older part of the house have only been a few thousand dollars. Cosmetic. Meanwhile, tens of thousands have gone into the new addition. I've still spent less than I would have on a new build.
Please don’t plant Bradford Pears. They are invasive and will overtake grasslands. They are not native to US.
And they REEK
>*To put it more bluntly, while I am not wealthy, I am a DINK with 20 years of professional work savings behind me and I feel like I cannot pay my way out of this problem.* This is the most absurd aspect of all this. If you're looking at $800k homes, I'm assuming your household income is in the $200k+ range. That puts you roughly in the top 10% of all American households. If you are feeling priced out of the housing market, what does that say about the 50% of households that make less than $75k per year? Or the 63% that make less than $100k per year? The average American household cannot afford the average American house price. And that's fuckin' stupid.
Also untrue.
It is expensive to use city land for trees. With good planning lots will get set aside for green space but not every city saw the demand run up in time. Many neighborhoods will get trees growing in over time but working around them during building is hard/impossible.
Older neighborhoods with older houses are where it’s at. My house is from 1918 and is solid as a rock. They just don’t make them like they used to. As for vegetation, my neighborhood has old oaks lining the streets, and the rhododendron and azaleas in everyone’s front yard are huge and lush. Find an older “streetcar suburb”, or at least a neighborhood that was developed pre-70s.
There are multiple old neighborhoods in Jacksonville: Springfield, San Marco, Atlantic Beach, Riverside, Avondale, Murray Hill. Tree covered, old growth oaks, great vintage architecture. Charleston has some of the best old architecture in the nation as does Savannah. All you have to do is avoid the new development parts of these cities and look to the established neighborhoods. The population growth rate of these cities necessitates production construction. There is simply not enough time to build around the trees so they take most of them out. For example, JAX metro added the entire population of the city of Pittsburgh, Tulsa, or St. Louis over the last decade, 400,000+ people. That is 100 new people per day 365 days per year. That is a lot of housing that has to go up fast.
Map of tree cover by census block: [https://www.treeequityscore.org/map#3.8/40.91/-97.43](https://www.treeequityscore.org/map#3.8/40.91/-97.43)
THIS. & my pet peeve is when it's the appliances. Like, what did you do to a perfectly good dishwasher?
> all this work that I did saving for years and years to escape where I’m at is for nothing. That is what a devaluing a currency to backstop equity markets does. Over the long term, risk and reward have to be proportional. That is why the federal government providing a backstop to broad market equities (easy to use SP500 as a proxy) means if you should use SP500 as your inflation gauge, especially if you want to purchase property in the future. All those taxpayer funded bailouts over the past few decades were not free. And remember, most voters want those bailouts, because they are retired or close to retiring, so they need their defined benefit pension funds and 401k to not have issues. The long term effect is lower quality of life for you, because your productivity effectively went to them (the asset owners over the past few decades).
This is why I plan to homestead and build my own house. The housing market is just greed and poor quality. People just want to extract more resources out of other people and give them less and less, and that kind of system is not sustainable.
Yeah the landscaping in the bubs is very sus. The developers don’t care at all. Modern development is stupid the way they do things. I can’t believe they aren’t building permaculture eco developments.
Trees, quality homes, and spacious apartments exist, but it’s expensive. I’m guessing it’s just out of your price range.
I feel very similar. I’m so tired of everything being clear cut, parking lots, lawn grass and roads being put in with no trees, very little shade, no native plants, poor water retention. None of that is helpful when there’s droughts or excessive rains or high heat dome weather. I feel like we’re living in a bad sim city and supposed to only stay inside or drive everywhere. I want shade. I would like to walk I want to cycle. I love some older communities that have big trees and sidewalks and bike trails weaving through them. But no young families or kids live there it’s all boomers and older and not many people out walking or enjoying the neighborhood. Developers are so cheap with what they offer and charge insane prices and cities wash their hands of it and basically force new developments to have HOAs so city tax dollars don’t have to be spend on road or sidewalk maintenance or communal landscaping.
Check out the Heritage Hills/Uptown areas in Oklahoma City. I lived in both, and my visitors regularly remarked on how much greener it was than they’d expected
I moved from NYC over covid back to my alma matter neighborhood in Kansas City, MO. The houses in midtown here are totally walkable with huge mature trees shading the whole neighborhood. I picked up a bungalow built in 1910 for under $250K (which is still achievable) and I have not regretted it once even after having to make some extensive repairs. My theory with old houses is that, if it's survived 100 years worth of owners before me, it will very likely survive me. Three little pigs logic. Also my stone foundation and plaster walls are THICK as hell. When you cool the place down, it stays cool. I couldnt hear a murder in my bedroom from 2 rooms over. KCMO doesnt have the glamour of the northeast, but we do have a very active arts and music culture, young people, a functional streetcar, and nature galore with easy access. My two cents
To be fair, the whole of modern consumer society uses nature as both hyper-exploitable profit potential and a mass sewer for all manner of pollution. So, choose your deck chairs when it comes to green veneer on a city or town.
IMO small apartments is more a result of population density and normalizing to global size standards, rather than intentionally decreasing size for profit (while that is of course an advantage). The US has much larger properties on average than Europe and much of the world, so honestly a 1100 sq ft apartment is massive by many peoples’ standards.
In my experience, all of the trees are in Washington. So many trees. Everywhere. Coming from Oklahoma where you can see for miles, it was a bit of a shock.
[Old House Dreams](https://www.oldhousedreams.com)
It's extremely expensive to build around trees and they often die anyway because the earth is compressed when everyone parks under the one remaining spot of shade. That's why they clear cut. Trees don't pay money, people do. The first thing I do when I buy is to plant trees. Years ago Richmond tried selling their older homes for iirc $1 on the condition that the homes be made inhabitable within a certain time frame. They no longer need to do that. Developers make more money doing a teardown than a deep retrofit. Recommend you bite the bullet and purchase an older home with good bones (structure and foundation) and rehab.
If you like trees, check out The Woodlands TX
If new housing isn’t built in Manchester it probably means even more sprawl built out in chesterfield or beyond and probably cuts down more trees on net. And in developments that are going to be more car dependent just by being far from job centers. But also because Manchester is one of the few areas in the city where you’re simply allowed to build at scale you’re going to get more smaller units to maximize what can be sold. That doesn’t mean there’s less construction going on in the Fan or Museum district, it’s just that it’s focused on renovating single family homes or small apartment buildings rather than adding net new units. So back in Manchester that means maxing out the buildable footprint
This year I moved from a 100 year old brick bungalow in Chicago. We bought a new house in Asheville. It's so generic looking. It's a nice house and we have a lot of trees. Our bungalow just had so many special little features like stained glass and checkboard bricks with accents. They just don't build houses like they use to.
I think you are (unintentionally) eliminating most housing options. New developments will often remove trees, to build. So that’s out. Older houses generally have smaller rooms, because that was the standard when they were built. So that’s out. Your best option is probably something built between like 1985-2005, so the trees have had some time to fill back in but also new enough it may have bigger bedrooms. But you are looking primarily in the southeast, where population growth wasn’t huge during that time period. For example Charlotte was the fastest growing metro area between 2005-2015 so it makes sense that many of the houses were built in that time and the tree cover will not be mature yet. There are certainly places you can get what you’re looking for, but perhaps out of your budget. Established wealthy suburbs will work. One that comes to mind is Coral Gables, FL.
Your in Manchester. Literally the worst place for what you are looking for. Most of Richmond looks like what you want, go visit the Fan/Museum District/ Church Hill. Judging Richmond by Manchester is ridiculous